ശ്രീ ഭദ്രകാലീ സ്തുതിഃ

Eight verses from the Mahabhagavata Purana, spoken by Brahma and Vishnu together, and the register is Vedantic before it is anything else. She is saluted as the maker of the universe and the supreme mistress, eternal and first, whose form is truth and knowing; beyond speech, without qualities, exceedingly subtle, beyond knowledge and reached only through pure knowing. The fifth verse turns that argument into a body, in the manner of the old cosmic hymns: the sky is your head and the region of the navel the atmosphere, your eyes are moon and sun and fire, the opening of them is the good waking and the day, and their closing, Mother, is the night.